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MSc Dissertation in
ABSTRACT
In recent years, people concerns on emissions are growing. As vehicles are one of
the contributors, some governments had introduced legislations pertaining to the matter.
Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) for example was introduced by the National
Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) of the United States in order to
encourage car manufacturers to improve their product's efficiency, thus reducing
emissions. Higher efficiency means less fuel consumption without compromising
vehicles' performance. One of the solutions is to design the vehicles using smaller engine
and light weight design. Conventional heavy materials can be replaced with new
advanced materials to reduce weight.
This dissertation is concerned with the design of light weight automotive brake
pedal. Later we will be looking at how a new material can be selected as replacement for
conventional material. Material selection will be carried out systematically using CES
Edupack to search for potential materials. Material properties and manufacturing process
are the two factors which will be considered during material selection process.
An actual steel brake pedal sample from a passenger car will be used as example.
The component will be measured using coordinate measuring machine before a 3D model
can be generated using Solidworks. A new brake pedal will be designed using alternative
material. Both current and new design of brake pedal will be analysed using ABAQUS.
Linear static stress analysis will be performed to study the behaviour of the component
when subjected to extreme foot load. Based on analysis results, a polymer based
composite material was found as a suitable material to produce light weight brake pedal.
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1
power to both accelerate and decelerate the vehicle. Eventually there was the
development of basic supplemental braking system consisting of a hand lever to push a
wooden fiiction pad directly against the metal tread of the wheels. Over the years, as the
level of transportation technology has increased the braking system used to slow down
vehicles has also been improved.
In 1902 in New York, Ransom E. Olds had invented a brake system known as
external brake. It used a single flexible stainless-steel band, wrapped around a drum on
the rear axle. When the brake pedal was applied, the band contracted to grip the drum.
Although it ground down solid rubber tires pretty quickly, the tire brake was popular on
carriages and many early autos. By 1904, practically all car makers were building cars
with an external brake on each rear wheel [I].
However, the external brake demonstrated some serious flaws in everyday use.
On hills, for example, the brake unwrapped and gave way rapidly. Another drawback to
the external brake was it had no protection from dirt so its bands and drums quickly wore.
A brake job every 200 to 300 miles was considered normal. The problems associated
with the external brake were overcome by the internal brake or drum brake as it is now
known. And, since brake parts were inside drums and protected from dirt, drivers could
go over 1,000 miles between brakes overhauls [l].
Since those days, drum brakes became all-dominant in the United States. In
Europe, particularly in Great Britain, it had to share the stage with disc brakes. The first
record of the disc brake was in 1902 in England where Dr. F.W. Lanchester patented a
design for a disc brake. However, these early disc brakes were not as effective at stopping
as the contemporary drum brakes of that time. Its major problem was noise. Metal-tometal contact between his copper linings and the metal disc caused an intense screech
that sent chills through anyone within earshot. The problem was solved in 1907 when
Herbert Frood, another Englishman, came up with the idea of lining pads with asbestos.
The new material was quickly adopted by car manufacturers on both drum and disc
brakes. Asbestos linings also outlasted other friction materials by a wide margin up to
10,000-mile [I].
As roads improved and cars began to be driven at high speeds, engineers
recognized the need for even better braking system. In 1918, a young inventor named
Malcolm Lougheed (or Lockheed) applied hydraulics to braking. He used cylinders and
tubes to transmit fluid pressure against brake shoes, pushing the shoes against the drums.
In 1921, the first passenger car the Model 'A' Duesenberg was equipped with four-wheel
hydraulic brakes [I]. The basic braking system we have today is based on this technology.
The modern automotive brake system today is the result of improvement for over 100
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1.3.1
Leverage System
Leverage system is a foot pedal mechanism which is designed in such a way that
it can multiply the force from driver's foot several times before it is transmitted to the
71
piston on the left [6]. This means that if 100 lbs force is applied to the left-hand piston, a
900 lbs force will come out on the right-hand piston.
Force
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1.3.3 Friction
Friction happens when force from the brake fluid press the brake pads or friction
linings against the rotor or drum. Friction also happens between tires and road surface.
Friction is a measure of how hard it is to slide one object over another [ 6 ] .The coefficient
of friction is the ratio of the limiting friction to the normal reaction between the sliding
surfaces. It is constant for a given pair of surfaces.
Coefficient of fiction = Friction force I Normal load
1.4
To develop and analyse new component design using CAD and CAE applications.
To clearly justify the results and conclusions.
Knowledge gained from this project is to be able to understand the steps needed to
design new brake pedal with new material from systematic material selection. The use of
CAD and CAE for design and analysis will help to minimise design time.
1.5
manufacturers are searching out opportunities to replace conventional materials with new
and lighter materials without compromising its mechanical and physical properties. An
example of reducing weight through new material application can be seen in the
manufacturing of Chevrolet Corvette. The Chevrolet Corvette is the sport car range that
has been manufactured by Chevrolet since 1953. It has been proclaimed to be the
"America's Sports Car" [l 11. The recent model Chevrolet Corvette C6 is shown in Figure
structural and mechanical property concerns, modified alloy chemistries and heat
treatment cycles were used with permanent mould casting to achieve the mechanical
properties of 35 ksi tensile strength, 25 ksi yield strength and 7% elongation [9]. Another
advantage other than light weight is the exceptional appearance which is important as it is
a visible component. Secondary cosmetic process such as spray painting will be no longer
required.
Figure 8 - Aluminium cast brake pedal to be used by the next generation Corvette C7 [9]
It is reported in [12] titled 'Concurrent design and manufacturing process of
automotive composite components' which had used concurrent engineering in the
development of polymeric based composite automotive clutch pedal. The research
objective was to demonstrate the use of Computer Aided Design (CAD) and Computer
Aided Engineering (CAE) to help designers in the design process. The chosen product
was a cable operated automotive clutch pedal which was converted from conventional
material to polymer based composite. Several engineering computer applications were
used from conceptual design until prototyping such Pro Engineer, LUSAS, Mould Flow
Analysis, and Stereolithography(SLA) and 3D Printer for rapid prototyping.
There were two conceptual designs considered; the 'T' profile and the 'I' profile.
Highlighted by [12] that based on analysis, the 'T' profile design was stiffer compared to
the 'I' profile. The analysis was done using LUSAS finite element analysis software.
Another interesting finding was the addition of ribs to the design to improve stiffness and
rigidity. The use of ribs enables designers to compensate the effect of reducing section
thickness to improve design efficiency. However, S.M. Sapuan [12] did not discuss the
overall performance of the new component in comparison with the original component.
1.6
Report Structtire
Chapter I
lNTROWCTlON
Chapter 2
CURRENT COMPONENT
h-3
MEASUREMENT. GEOMETRY
GENERATION AND ANALYSIS
OF CURRENT COMPONENT
Chapter4
NEW WTERIAL SELECTION
4
Chapter5
NEW DESIGN AND ANALYSIS
Ulapter 6
DISCUSSION
w e r7
CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE
RECOMMENDATIONS
also the mounting place of hydraulic master cylinder (not shown in figure) of the brake
system and brake light switch. The spring is used to retain brake pedal assembly at its
original position. When the brake pedal is depress, the spring will provides slight load to
the brake pedal. When brake pedal is released, it will move back to its original position.
Bolt and nut, pivot shaft and plastic bearings anchored the brake pedal assembly to the
bracket. Grease was applied at this area to minimise friction.
Figure 16 - Brake pedal asse&bly: (a) Brake pedal (b) Rubber foot pad (c) Switch
contact pad
2.3
Material Properties
A good design should always accompanied with the correct choice of material.
Selecting the wrong material will result in higher product cost, poor product performance
or even product failure. It was stated by [15] that normally the choice of material is
dictated by the design, but sometimes the other way around. Since the number of
engineering materials is large at an estimated over 120,000 materials are available, the
material selection process can be a difficult task without guidance. Ashby [IS] also
explained that a method of screening those materials is by understanding the design
requirements for a component by an analysis of function, constraints, objectives and free
variables. Table 1 explains what those criteria are while Table 2 shows the design
requirements for a brake pedal.
Table 1 - Function, constraints, objectives and free variables [15]
Function
Constraints
Objective
Free variables
Constraints
Objective
Free variables
Minimum
Properties
Maximum
General:
I Density
Price
*7800
*99.13
*0.25
7900
99.62
Units
___I
0.45
Composition:
I Fe (Iron)
C (Carbon)
Mn (Manganese)
P (Phosphorus)
S (Sulphur)
*O
0.05
Si (Silicon)
0.05
Young's Modulus
*205
215
Compressive Strength
*255
315
Tensile Strength
3 10
430
Poisson's Ratio
0.285
0.295
Mechanical:
GPa
Manufacturing Process
Steel brake pedals are manufactured using press forming. Press forming covers a
range of sheet forming processes performed by means of a die and press. Processes used
include blanking, shearing, drawing, bending, forming, coining and swaging. These
processes may be performed consecutively to form complex shapes. However, all shapes
produced by this process have a uniform cross-sectional thickness. Tools are dedicated
and, therefore, tooling costs are high. Only materials available in sheet form can be
stamped and the thickness is limited to available sheet size 1181. More detail information
on press forming is attached in Appendix 2.
Deep drawing
Blanking
Die
Bending
Blank
Stretching
CHAPTER 3
3.1
Although 'finite element' terminology was first used in 1960 by R.W. Clough in a paper
on plane elasticity problems [19], the ideas were dated back much further. A. Hrennikoff
in 1941 and D. McHenry in 1943 used a latticed of line elements for the solution of
stresses in continuous solids. Meanwhile R. Courant in 1943 had proposed setting up the
solution of stresses in a variational form. He used piecewise interpolation functions over
triangular sub-regions making up the whole region as a method to obtain approximate
numerical solutions [20]. Since then more and more researchers involved in FEM. Table
4 summarizes the important findings made by early researchers.
Name of researchers
A. Hremikoff and
D. McHenry
1941-1943
1943
R. Courant
S. Levy
1954
Kelsey
M.J. Turner
1956
R.W. Clough
1960
M.J. Turner
Findings
1960
R.J. Melosh
1961
R.H. Gallagher
1962
Material nonlinearities
1963
1963
1961-1964
matrix
1965
J.S. Archer
1965
O.C. Zienkiewicz
1968
Visco-elasticity problems
1969
T. Belytschko
1976